I’m forever rearranging my patio pots, so the display looks different from week to week. I treat it a little like flower arranging, but on a bigger scale, and it's just the best thing to do on a sunny Saturday morning, coffee in hand. And what lets me create ever-changing groupings of foliage and flowers? A metal plant stand, like this new design IKEA just launched.

As small-space container gardening ideas go, a plant stand is such an easy win. For a start, it allows you to see your plants from a different angle: and while the sprawling stems of geraniums just look messy spilling from a pot on the ground, raise that planter and suddenly they’re stylishly sculptural. Pots of trailing plants – creeping Jenny and Dichondra that you’d normally grow in a hanging basket – on a high shelf create fabulous cascades of foliage, and hanging-basket blooms such as petunias can look almost ravishing, tumbling downwards without a care.

Get creative with grocery-store bedding plants and you can add all sorts of unique accents to your patio display. Find space for a few garden knick-knacks for a final shelf-scape flourish, and suddenly that boring wall looks a million dollars.

As you can probably tell by now, I like my plant stand a lot. But what I love most about it is that it makes me look like a great gardener. The majority of my patio pots are filled with low-maintenance perennials and, while they flower on-and-off for months, this rollercoaster of a blooming cycle means that some weeks they look fantastic, others less so. When a pot is at its peak, I shift it into the spotlight on the plant stand; as soon as it starts to fade, and I snip its stems to encourage another flush of flowers, I move it down onto the paving, out of the way.

The result? Everyone only ever notices the abundance of loveliness on the plant stand, and thinks my fingers are greener than a gherkin.

So, let’s take a closer look at the IKEA LACKO Shelf Unit. Like my garden plant stand, it's metal which means it blends nicely into the background and leaves all the glory to the plants. Another benefit of metal is that it doesn’t need re-treating every year like wood, which would be such a fiddly job with a plant stand.

At 36¼ inches wide and 12⅝ inches deep, the unit brings plenty of shelf space without taking up much floorspace. It will tuck under most windows at 29⅞ inches high, and is an unobtrusive, not-quite-black gray tone. Adjustable feet mean it’s sturdy on uneven paving, and the shelves are perforated to allow good drainage. Though it’s made of powder-coated steel, the unit has the echo of old wrought-iron furniture, so would be equally at home in a romantic cottage garden as a sleek, modern yard.

This new shelf unit is designed to coordinate with IKEA's existing LÄCKÖ Shelving Unit that’s the same depth but narrower at 24 inches and taller at 63 inches. If you love the metal look, then there’s a matching chair, table, bistro set and a seriously tempting loveseat with and without cushions, all in the same gray tone.

If you’re still wondering what some patio plant shelves will add to your life (and yes, your backyard design too), then how about using one to create a herb garden outside your back door? Heck, there are plenty of small-space vegetable varieties bred to thrive in containers, so you could grow a vertical veggie garden if you wanted to. The bottom shelf is just the right size to fit a heated seed mat and tray, too, and you could even attach a gro-light to the shelf above.

Or how about popping a mini water feature made with a floating solar fountain on the top shelf among your pots of blooms?

And that’s another reason why you need a plant stand: it will let you dream up all sorts of new ways to squeeze even more plants into your garden!

Shop More Metal Plant Stands